News from the Votemaster

President Barack Obama was reelected President with a strong majority in the electoral college
although not quite as big as in 2008. If he wins Florida, where he is currently leading, but
where the final results are not in (because the vote counters got tired and went to bed instead of finishing
the job last night), he will have won every state this year that he won in 2008 except Indiana and North Carolina.
Those two are deep red states that Republicans nearly always win. They simply have reverted to the norm
(although North Carolina was close: Romney's margin was only 3 points).
Noteworthy is that Obama appears to have won all the swing states except North Carolina.
If Florida stays blue, Obama will have 332 electoral votes (vs. 365 in 2008). If Florida becomes red in
the end, Obama will still have hit 300 EVs, with a total of 303. Either way, a solid victory.
None of the media are reporting anything about NE-02, which Obama won last time, so let us assume
Romney won all five of Nebraska's electoral votes.

All the talk about one candidate winning the electoral college and the other winning the popular
vote was off base.
Obama won the popular vote handily, with a margin of about 2.5 million votes, although the exact total is
not known yet. This represents a percentage of 50.1%, to Romney's 48.4%. If it holds, he will have won
by 1.7%, slightly more than the average of the national polls was predicting. In 2008, Obama got 53%
of the popular vote,so Obama's victory was smaller this time. That is not entirely surprising, since
Obama had far more money than McCain did in 2008 but in 2012 the Romney campaign plus various
billionaire-funded superPACs had more money than Obama. Money matters, but it is not everything.

Whenever a party loses an election big time, there is a lot of wailing and the pulling of hair.
Although the popular vote was close, the Republicans lost nearly all the swing states, including
New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.
They probably lost Florida, and almost lost North Carolina. It is true that some of the races were close,
but in politics a win is a win and a loss is a loss. With the loss of Virginia and close call in North
Carolina, the party's base has shrunk to the Deep South (except for Florida), and big, empty states
in the Great Plains and Mountain West where the buffalo once roamed but the electoral votes never did
and still don't.

As we mentioned many times this year, the traditionally blue states--the ones Democrats have won five times in
a row--are worth 242 EVs. Obama won every one of them. None were even close. Not even Wisconsin, where
Obama had a 7-point margin even with a Wisconsite on the opposing ticket. Romney made a last-ditch
effort to win Pennsylvania, but came up short. The blue team won by 5 points. So next time around, we can
talk about the 242 EVs that the Democrats have won six times in a row. Rick Santorum or Marco Rubio aren't going to make
a dent here, probably not Paul Ryan, either. Chris Christie might.

But something new has been added to the mix. New Mexico is now dark blue, so make that 247.
Obama also won Nevada, Iowa, and New Hampshire by margins of 6, 5, and 5 points, respectively.
If they get added to the Democratic base, it becomes 263. If the Democrats have a floor of 263 EVs
in 2016, the Republicans have to win all of Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida.
All of them. Moving farther to the right, as seems entirely possible, is probably not the ticket to win these
big, diverse swing states.

Despite the fact that it is unmentionable, we are going to mention the 800-pound gorilla wandering around
the polling place: race. There are certainly white voters in Virginia, North Carolina, and Northern Florida
who didn't vote for Obama due to his color but are otherwise not fundamentally opposed to a Democrat.
All of the 2016 likely Democratic nominees--Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, and Martin O'Malley--are
lilly white. Even senator-elect Elizabeth Warren (who will be under pressure from the left to audition for the role of Howard Dean),
is 31/32 white. The racist voters might well vote for a Democrat in 2016, unless the nominee is a woman, which
opens a different can of worms.

Demographically, the Republican Party's base is angry, old white men. That is no formula for future victories.
Democrats did well with women, Latinos, and young people. Unless the Republicans stop trying to repeal
both Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut, they are not going to improve their standing with women.
If Obama makes a big effort at passing immigration reform and either gets it or has it go down on a
party-line vote in the House, the Republicans can write off Latinos for a generation.
As to young people, political identities are set early. Twenty somethings who have now voted for the
Democrats twice aren't going to be easy to peal away unless the Republicans can pull an elephant out of the hat.

Republicans will begin the Great Scapegoat Hunt today. It is like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey
except it uses an elephant instead of a donkey and a 6-inch nail instead of a pin, and you have to drive it
all the way in. Actually, we did this yesterday though to beat the crowds.
Here is the tea party version
and here is what
Karl Rove is thinking.

Yesterday, we predicted Obama would win 303 electoral votes. He won either 303 or 332, depending how
Florida ultimately turns out. The map showed North Carolina as a tie (although the blog said Romney would
carry it, which he narrowly did). Other than these two states, we called all the winners correctly, for
a score of either 48 of 50, 49 of 50, or 48 of 49, depending on how you want to score (or not score)
North Carolina. All the talk from the Republicans about how skewed the polls were turned out to be--in the
now famous word of Joe Biden--malarkey. More about how individual pollsters did later this week.

It looks like we're too popular for our own good. Up until yesterday, this site had been getting
about a quarter of a million visits a day and had been handling that easily with one server, which
was running at about 5% of capacity. To prepare for election night, a second server was added and all
seemed fine. To make a long story short, there were 2 million visits yesterday and the servers couldn't
handle the load. They were pumping out 200 million bits/sec, but that wasn't enough capacity. It was
also impossible to update the blog and map because it was impossible to log in. Eventually I started to
do the updates on a different server, but the lines were so clogged that it was impossible to transfer
the updated map and other files to the servers. The result was not a very good election night experience,
with slow and erratic service. After the networks declared Obama the winner, people started going to bed
and we were able to resume normal operation. Our apologies for the mess.

There is much more to say. But not today. Come back tomorrow for more thoughts.

03:30 A.M. EST

Time for a break and some sleep now. Back later in the day with a wrap-up.

03:20 A.M. EST

CNN has called the Nevada Senate race for Sen. Dean Heller (R=NV). The only open race now is North
Dakota, where Heidi Heitkamp is a 3,000-vote lead.

02:50 A.M. EST

Women sweep up Hampshire. The voters of New Hampshire elected women to occupy the governor's
mansion and to fill both House seats. Together with the the two women senators, Women have all the top
jobs in New Hampshire.

Same-sex marriage was approved in Maine as well as Maryland and maybe in Washington state.
An anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment lost in Minnesota.

02:35 A.M. EST

Mitch McConnell issued a very aggressive statement telling the President to come with a plan
to avoid the fiscal cliff and then promising to look at it very critically. In other words, he promised
more gridlock. Note: McConnell is up for reelection in 2014 and is afraid of being tea partied if he
compromises,

Women did very well in the Senate. There will be new women senators in Nebraska, Wisconsin, Massachusetts,
and Hawaii. Women are departing in Maine and Texas though. Still it is a net gain. If Heidi Heitkamp or
Shelley Berkley win, that will add to the number of women in the Senate.

02:30 A.M. EST

Voters in Colorado and Washington have approved legalizing marijuana for all uses, not just medical ones.

01:55 A.M. EST

Three Senate races are still open. In Montana, where Jon Tester has a 9-point lead but only 41% of the
votes have been counted..
In North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp has a 3,000 vote lead with 91% of the votes counted.
Finally, in Nevada, Dean Heller is ahead by 7,000 votes with 91% of the votes counted.

01:30 A.M. EST

Obama gave his victory speech. It was classic Obama and the audience went wild.

CNN has projected that Tammy Baldwin will win the Wisconsin Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI).
She will be the first openly gay senator. It will be interesting to see if any other senators come out of the closet net.

01:00 A.M. EST

Romney gave a concession speech. It was short and sweet, emphasizing how important it will be for Obama to
reach across the aisle. Romney's toast now. The rest of the day Republicans will be blaming him personally what they
see as a national disaster worse than Hurricane Sandy.

The story is not over yet in the Senate. Four states still hang in the balance:

Wisconsin - Tammy Baldwin (D) vs. Tommy Thompson (R)

Montana - Jon Tester (D) vs. Denny Rehberg (R)

Nevada - Shelley Berkley (D) vs. Dean Heller (R)

North Dakota - Heidi Heitkamp (D) vs. Rick Berg (R)

00:48 A.M. EST

Some results about ballot initiatives on marijuana.

Arkansas - No on legalizing medical marijuana

Massachusetts - Yes on legalizing medical marijuana

Colorado - Yes on legalizing marijuana

Oregon - No on legalizing marijuana

Additionally, Maryland, voted to legalize sam-sex marriage.

Here is the current state of the Senate races.

State

Democrat

D %

Republican

R %

Ind

I %

Pct reporting

Arizona

Richard Carmona

45%

Jeff Flake

51%

60% reporting

California

Dianne Feinstein*

57%

Elizabeth Emken

43%

28% reporting

Connecticut

Chris Murphy

53%

Linda McMahon

45%

60% reporting

Delaware

Tom Carper*

66%

Kevin Wade

29%

96% reporting

Florida

Bill Nelson*

55%

Connie McGillicuddy

42%

89% reporting

Hawaii

Maizie Hirono

Linda Lingle

No results yet

Indiana

Joe Donnelly

40%

Richard Mourdock

44%

91% reporting

Maine

Cynthia Dill

14%

Charlie Summers

29%

Angus King

54%

49% reporting

Maryland

Ben Cardin*

54%

Dan Bongino

28%

82% reporting

Massachusetts

Elizabeth Warren

53%

Scott Brown*

47%

85% reporting

Michigan

Debbie Stabenow*

57%

Pete Hoekstra

40%

55% reporting

Minnesota

Amy Klobuchar*

64%

Kurt Bills

32%

57% reporting

Mississippi

Albert Gore

40%

Roger Wicker*

57%

76% reporting

Missouri

Claire McCaskill*

54%

Todd Akin

40%

90% reporting

Montana

Jon Tester*

51%

Denny Rehberg

44%

19% reporting

Nebraska

Bob Kerrey

41%

Deb Fischer

59%

85% reporting

Nevada

Shelley Berkley

46%

Dean Heller*

46%

78% reporting

New Jersey

Bob Menendez*

59%

Joseph Kyrillos

39%

83% reporting

New Mexico

Martin Heinrich

51%

Heather Wilson

45%

74% reporting

New York

Kirsten Gillibrand*

71%

Wendy Long

28%

63% reporting

North Dakota

Heidi Heitkamp

51%

Rick Berg

49%

89% reporting

Ohio

Sherrod Brown*

50%

Josh Mandel

46%

81% reporting

Pennsylvania

Bob Casey*

54%

Tom Smith

44%

88% reporting

Rhode Island

Sheldon Whitehouse*

65%

Barry Hinckley

35%

82% reporting

Tennessee

Mark Clayton

65%

Bob Corker*

30%

87% reporting

Texas

Paul Sadler

40%

Ted Cruz

57%

88% reporting

Utah

Scott Howell

31%

Orrin Hatch*

65%

55% reporting

Vermont

Bernie Sanders*

71%

John MacGovern

25%

78% reporting

Virginia

Tim Kaine

52%

George Allen

48%

88% reporting

Washington

Maria Cantwell*

59%

Michael Baumgartner

41%

55% reporting

West Virginia

Joe Manchin*

61%

John Raese

36%

88% reporting

Wisconsin

Tammy Baldwin

51%

Tommy Thompson

47%

71% reporting

Wyoming

Tim Chesnut

22%

John Barrasso*

76%

89% reporting

00:00 A.M. EST

Now that everyone is in bed, the servers are back up.
At this moment, Colorado, Virgina, and Florida are still undecided, but Obama is leading in all of them.
If he wins them all, then the electoral map is the same as 2008 except with Indiana and North Carolina.
I'll start looking at the Senate next.

11:17 P.M. EST

CNN has called Ohio for Obama and with that the election. So Obama has been reelected, the Democrats will keep
the Senate and the Republicans will keep the House. A year and $6 billion later and we are back where we started.

The next issue is dealing with the fiscal cliff. If the Republicans continue to obstruct, we have a problem.
A newly reelected President won't easily let the opposition dictate terms.

10:16 P.M. EST

Claire McCaskill won MO. The Democrats will definitely keep the Senate.
With both Mourdock and Akin losing, the tea party will have some explaining to do.